Recycling is a great idea and we should promote the option wherever practical.
However if the full cycle is not assured before you start on a project then it may not be wise to start at all. Expense and resources involved in setting up and maintaining a cycle can be quite large and may not always be offset by the perceived value of the recycle. Will you be able to sell the sorted items or will you have to pay to have them taken away?
Keep in mind that until the waste has actually been made into something new then it could be argued that no recycling has taken place.
One of the early stumbling blocks to a successful Recycle is simply the number of people
and / or steps in the cycle that must be repetitively performed correctly to achieve a usable resource. There has to be a “buy in” to the idea by everyone in the cycle and the method should be as simple as possible using equipment that makes recycling easy.
Take the current trend of Hotels wishing to recycle the waste from the guest rooms. Most of us would say this is an excellent idea. However there is considerable expense setting up multi cavity bins in each room. If the guest does go for the idea, then there is the ongoing maintenance and labour of servicing those bins. There must be good physical control of the often tiny quantities of multiple recyclable items from the room each day which then must be consolidated to be sent out of the hotel and on to an accredited recycler. Don’t forget to check and see if your City waste collector will accept mixed recyclables or you could buy multi cavity bins unnecessarily.
An alternative approach could be to provide centrally placed recycle bins in the common area on each floor so the guest has to take their recyclables to the bin. When they do this the fuzzy feeling of doing the right thing will be intensified and so they are more likely to do it better and more often. Glass, cans and newspapers may suit this method as plastics may be soiled. Guests who decline to take their recyclables out probably weren’t going to sort it in the room either, so their regular in room bin can automatically be classified as general waste and kept out of the recycle stream as a first step in quality assurance. Room attendants would be able to direct all their energies to servicing the room without recycling distractions.
Other features of this method are that:
1) The set up cost is quite possibly less than “in room” bins and larger more robust bins
(stainless steel) could be used which will often compliment your décor.
2) The actual sorting of the waste is likely to be much more accurate and more easily correctable. Servicing of the bins will take less labour and can be at any time of the day that suits the Hotel.
3) I suspect the annual quantity (kg’s) of bin liner bags used would be considerably less and there may be the option to reuse the Paper bin liner bag too.
4) Stainless steel waste bins although generally having a long in service life, do have a residual recyclable value as a valuable scrap metal.
Which liner bag to use?
The base material options for bin liner bags are Degradable plastic, Corn starch based, Virgin plastic and Recycled plastic. Each type has their uses in the right situation.
The Corn starch and Degradable are the most expensive and I feel should only be used where it can be shown that they are not just extra expense for little or no return to the user or the environment. Virgin plastic is usually used for clear, white or opaque bags, is more expensive than black bags and may be a recyclable material.
Bags made from recycled material, usually black, are probably the most cost effective and have actually completed the recycle path that we started with.
